Trump cancels rallies in Kansas and Iowa, opting for telerallies to reach more voters, RNC says

ROCK HILL, S.C. (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday canceled weekend rallies in Iowa and Kansas, opting instead to support Republican candidates with telerallies that his party said could reach more voters in nearly two dozen states in the final days of a midterm election that could cost the GOP control of Congress.

The president traveled to South Carolina Thursday for the second time in a month, a sign of Republican anxiety about Darline Graham's ability to fend off a robust challenge from Democrat Annie Andrews for a critical U.S. Senate seat.

Voters in South Carolina have not sent a Democrat to the Senate in nearly three decades. But Andrews, a pediatrician who previously ran unsuccessfully for Congress, is urging voters seeking change to “try something new for once.”

That message could resonate in an election year defined by voter frustration with the economy, gas prices and the war in Iran, putting Trump's Republican Party on defense in territory where they have rarely had to compete in recent years.

Beyond South Carolina, Republicans are entering the final days of this year's midterm elections navigating tight contests in Texas, Kansas, Ohio, Iowa and Alaska. Both parties are also closely following developments in the Mississippi Senate race.

The president projected confidence as he returned to the White House, saying, “We're going to have a strong Tuesday night.”

Trump was scheduled to hold a rally in Kansas on Saturday and in Iowa on Sunday. But the Republican National Committee announced Thursday evening that he would instead spend a “72-hour sprint” doing rallies by phone rather than in person, a move the RNC said would maximize Trump's ability to speak to voters nationwide. The RNC said telerallies are planned for nearly 20 states, and more may be announced.

It was an abrupt shift in Trump’s pledge to push through the final days of the campaign doing rally after rally to galvanize his supporters. As of Thursday, he had done 25 rallies during the month of October, falling short of a goal he had once placed north of 30.

There were signs the travel and long speeches have caught up with him. On Monday, in Corinth, Mississippi, Trump — whose voice has grown raspy — told the crowd, “God didn’t make your vocal cords to do a rally every day.”

But he bristled Thursday when a reporter asked whether he had canceled plans to travel to Kansas because of his health.

“You’ve been following me for two weeks. I feel perfect,” Trump snapped.

The president’s team was feeling more optimistic about Republican prospects and bullish on Kansas, where Democrat Adam Hamilton is challenging GOP Sen. Roger Marshall, according to a person familiar with the operation who spoke on condition of anonymity to share internal plans and strategy.

“I don’t feel I have to go to Kansas,” Trump said.

A campaign strategist with Republican Senate leadership said there was widespread curiosity about why the schedule was changing to telerallies. The strategist spoke on condition of anonymity to share the content of private conversations.

Trump, who revels in big crowds, has this month held rallies in smaller venues than many he once filled. The decision to switch to telerallies means he will be expected to speak for about 10 minutes instead of more than 90, as he does at in-person events.

Trump plans to travel to Daytona Beach, Florida, for a rally Friday. It’s not clear whether he will hold additional in-person events after that. The White House has not published his schedule for Monday, the final day of the campaign.

In South Carolina, Graham has struggled to quickly build connections with voters. The sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, she was appointed in July by Republican Gov. Henry McMaster to fill the remaining months of her brother’s term after his sudden death. In August, she became the party’s nominee to succeed him for a full six-year term.

“He was a great politician,” Trump said of Lindsey Graham, before promoting Darline Graham as his elected successor. “She’s got the gene.”

Darline Graham commended the president for having “delivered what Washington promised for decades.” She warned that Andrews “would just throw it all away."

Andrews appeared in nearby Fort Mill on Wednesday, where she said that if voters elect her and become unhappy with her performance on Capitol Hill, “you can fire me in six years.”

South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman, who lost to Graham in the GOP Senate primary runoff, has criticized Graham as unqualified. Norman, who has refused to campaign with Graham, said the race is closer than it would have been had he been nominated.

Lonnie Dean Johnson of Sumter, South Carolina, supported Norman in the primary and was voting Graham out of party loyalty, albeit unenthusiastically.

“She’s on a Republican ticket. I, by and large, support the Republican platform," he said. "So, I support her and wish her well.”

Democrats, meanwhile, are optimistic about their chances of booting GOP incumbent senators, including in Ohio, with an American public frustrated by continued high costs.

“Families see more money going out the door and not enough money coming in,” said Sherrod Brown, the Democratic Senate nominee who's competing against Ohio Republican Sen. Jon Husted. At a rally in Toledo Thursday, Brown said Husted is “looking out for data centers and Wall Street."

Farther north, Alaska's Republican governor has ordered an investigation after The New York Times reported Wednesday that Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola's campaign appeared to be involved in recruiting another candidate with the same name as Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan.

The Justice Department escalated the investigation Thursday, issuing a raft of new grand jury subpoenas, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.

The Justice Department also issued subpoenas to California officials in the latest effort to scrutinize local election administration. A federal judge in California earlier Thursday appointed a special master to evaluate claims by the Trump administration that the state has some 20,000 noncitizens on its voter rolls.

Trump called the development in Alaska a “conspiracy” and called for Peltola to be removed from the ballot. He has cast doubt on whether Peltola would be seated in the Senate even if she won the election.

Peltola’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to a message Thursday seeking comment on the governor's order. But during a campaign stop in Soldotna, Peltola, a former congresswoman, suggested the Times’ report was a “distraction” from issues such as Sen. Sullivan’s support of the war in Iran.

The revelation in Alaska was a reminder of the volatility of the midterm campaigns' final days as both parties make decisions about how to spend time and money with control of Congress on the line.

__

Sloan reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, Jesse Bedayn in Austin, Texas, Hannah Fingerhut in Clive, Iowa, John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, and Meg Kinnard, Collin Binkley and Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump, left, escorts Sen. Darline Graham, R-S.C., off the stage after Graham spoke during a campaign rally at Rock Hill Sports and Event Center, Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026, in Rock Hill, S.C. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Sen. Darline Graham, R-S.C., waves during a campaign rally in Rock Hill, S.C., Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Scott Kinser)

President Donald Trump arrives to speak during a campaign rally at Rock Hill Sports and Event Center, Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026, in Rock Hill, S.C. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Dr. Annie Andrews, Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, participates in a Get Out the Vote rally with other Democratic nominees in the midterm elections Friday, Oct. 16, 2026, in Columbia, S.C. (AP Photo/Meg Kinnard)

Sen. Darline Graham, R-S.C.,speaks at a campaign rally in Rock Hill, S.C., Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Scott Kinser)

URDA, Spain (AP) — Spain's second high-speed rail disaster this year, in which one train struck another from behind, killing 69 people, has raised fresh concerns about the safety of the country's rail network ahead of a national election.

Search teams with sniffer dogs continued to look for victims on Thursday, a day after the collision in central Spain. Cranes shifted the carriages as police and soldiers picked through the wreckage strewn down the gravel slope where at least three train carriages were tossed by the impact.

One more body was found overnight, taking the death toll to 69, according to the regional leader of Castilla La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page. He added that 50 people remained hospitalized, while officials worked with family members to identify the dead.

“As a society, we have once again suffered a devastating blow, and we must adopt measures so that this doesn’t happen again,” Spain’s King Felipe VI said after visiting injured passengers at a hospital in Toledo.

Spain’s government declared three days of mourning starting Thursday. A minute of silence was held at various points at noon, including with lawmakers outside the Parliament and by rail workers and union leaders in Madrid's main train station.

Testimonies of survivors filled Spanish television for a second day. Pablo López, who was on the train that was hit from behind, recounted the moment of impact and the horrific aftermath to state broadcaster TVE.

“The image I have in my head is of a person crawling on the ground after being shot out of the other train,” he said.

The high-speed rail network has been considered one of Spain's crowning achievements. It is the world's second-largest, after China's. Until this year, it had not experienced a deadly crash since coming into service over three decades ago.

The reputation of the Spanish railways was already tarnished when in January 46 people died after one train jumped the track and slammed into the side of another going the opposite way in southern Spain.

Then, just nine months later, came the collision Wednesday morning that turned a sleepy stretch of rail lined by olive groves near the village of Urda into a scene of carnage.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez pledged an investigation and improvements to restore trust in a rail system that carried 45 million travelers last year, including millions of tourists.

“It is clear that we need to reinforce the safety of our train service to rebuild the trust in our high-speed rail,” Sánchez said Wednesday. “It is not acceptable for a country like Spain to endure two high-speed train accidents in the same year.”

Sánchez called the crash a “tragedy” when he visited the crash site a second time on Thursday, promising the victims and their families that the state would be with them.

Both deadly crashes this year took place on the same rail line between Madrid and Seville, the first of Spain's high-speed network that opened in 1992. Each collision involved a train operated by state-owned RENFE and another operated by privately owned IRYO. Spain liberalized its high-speed rail service in 2021, with the Italian IRYO starting service the following year.

Sánchez had hoped to leverage a wave of discontent over housing costs and high rents when he called for early elections on Nov. 29.

He now faces questions about the safety of the railways, along with criticism from right-wing parties of his liberal migration policies and accusations of corruption against his party and his wife, which both he and his wife deny.

Sánchez's main rival, conservative Popular Party leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo, demanded a full investigation of the crash.

Alejandro Quiroga, a professor of political science at Madrid’s Complutense University, told The Associated Press that it is too early to tell if the crash will change the minds of many voters.

“This is not good news for the Socialist Party, but it may not hurt them very much because Spaniards generally don’t like it when politicians try to take advantage of tragedies,” Quiroga said. “That could be changing, but up until now it is not seen positively.”

Spain's Transport Minister Óscar Puente said Wednesday that the crash was caused by what he called the “inexplicable” order from a central command center for Spain’s trains after a security system had failed.

Puente said that at 8:30 a.m. the security system on a stretch of track stopped working due to a computer malfunction, causing all trains on that stretch to stop. At that point the IRYO train was stopped, with the RENFE train 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) behind.

But minutes later the central command told the RENFE train to start running again without any speed restrictions, and it ended up colliding with the stationary IRYO train at 8:53 a.m.

Spanish media on Thursday reproduced short audio clips of the controller ordering the train engineer to start moving.

Puente said that the train should never have been told to start moving again since a “stop signal” was still active on that line. And if it had, at least it should have been told to go at reduced speed.

Train workers held a strike on Thursday that had already been planned before the Urda crash to demand the government carry out safety improvements to the rail services that unions say were promised after the first deadly collision in January.

Union leaders questioned the minister putting all the blame on one controller and criticized the leaking of the control room’s conversations to the media.

“The focus should not be on if there was a human error, but rather what is wrong with the system, what situations must be improved so that if there is a human error we don’t find ourselves in this situation,” said Pepa Páez of the CCOO union.

A judge also declared the crash site an investigation zone.

Meanwhile, thousands of travelers were left searching for alternative transport with the high-speed line connecting Madrid and Seville shut down.

Wilson reported from Barcelona, Spain. Associated Press writer Teresa Medrano in Madrid contributed to this report.

Emergency services attend to the victims at the scene of a collision between two trains in Urda, Spain, on Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Relatives of passengers aboard the trains involved in a collision arrive at a religious residence converted into a temporary medical facility in Toledo, Spain, Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrea Comas)

Iryo employees react after observing a minute of silence for the victims of a train collision at Atocha railway station in Madrid, Spain, Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Emergency services work at the scene of a collision between two trains in Urda, Spain, on Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Emergency services work at the scene of a collision between two trains in Urda, Spain, on Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Emergency services work at the scene of a collision between two trains in Urda, Spain, on Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Cranes lift wrecked train carriages as rescuers search for victims following a collision between two trains in Urda, Spain, Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)